HJ: “You write in the book about what you call “deep media.” What do you see as the core characteristics of deep media? How do you see your concept relating to others being deployed right now such as transmedia or crossmedia?

FR: To me it’s mainly a question of emphasis. Are we focusing on the process or the goal? Transmedia, or crossmedia, puts the emphasis on a new process of storytelling: How do you tell a story across a variety of different media? Deep media puts the focus on the goal: To enable members of the audience (for want of a better term) to delve into a story at any level of depth they like, to immerse themselves in it. Not that this was fully thought out when I started–the term was suggested by a friend in late 2008 as a name for my blog, and when I looked it up online I saw that it had been used by people like Nigel Hollis, the chief analyst at Millward Brown, so I adopted it. That said, I think the terms are more or less interchangeable. I certainly subscribe to the seven core concepts of transmedia as you’ve laid them out. I also think we’re at an incredibly transitional point in our culture, and terms like “deep media” and “transmedia” are needed to describe a still-evolving way of telling stories. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if both terms disappeared in 15-20 years as this form of storytelling becomes ubiquitous and ultimately taken for granted….”